Save the date for our spring meeting of WG Roma inclusion that will take place
on 9-10 April in Toulouse on the theme 'How can cities support Roma to move
from camps into adequate housing?'

Rationale of study visit

A recent report by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) entitled 'No One Left Behind' analysed on the ground the situation of Roma living in slums in France. It found 570 slums inhabited by 16,000 people, most of whom are Roma from Romania and Bulgaria. While the report concluded that greater efforts are needed in France to change the practice of forced evictions into sustainable exit from slums, it also identified some good practices, such as the innovative approach in Toulouse.

Toulouse is implementing an integrated plan to eliminate slums through support by social workers and social services to help Roma move from camps into adequate housing, be it social housing or regular, mainstream housing. Moreover, Toulouse has been selected as one of the cities in France to pilot a Housing First approach, including beneficiaries among Roma.

EUROCITIES is organising a study visit to Toulouse to learn in practice from the city's programme for Roma inclusion. The aim is to build capacity of the city experts part of the WG Roma inclusion to learn, transfer and possibly replicate some of the inspiring practices from Toulouse to support Roma to access adequate housing while adapting to the specific local conditions and target groups in their cities. The goal is to strengthen the capacity of cities to develop and implement urban solutions for Roma inclusion.

This activity is part of EUROCITIES mutual learning programme between cities funded by the EU programme for Employment and Social Innovation (EaSi) between 2018-2021 under the strategic partnership with the European Commission DG EMPL.

Objectives

This study visit aims to:

learn from Toulouse's innovative practices to support Roma to move from camps into adequate housing

map innovative approaches to housing inclusion of Roma across cities in Europe

developguidelines for cities on how to develop integrated plans for a sustainable exit from camps into adequate housing

developactions for policy transfer of housing inclusion measures from Toulouse to other cities

learn how to use ESF for Roma inclusion measures

analyse policy developments on Roma access to housing from European Semester country reports

Participants

50 participants are expected to take part in the study visit and policy transfer, from:

policy-makers and practitioners from cities members of WG Roma inclusion, including politicians from Toulouse

representatives from local, regional and national authorities in France

policy experts from EU institutions and international organisations, including European Parliament Anti-Racism and Diversity Intergroup, European Commission, EU's Fundamental Rights Agency, OHCHR, Council of Europe

representatives of Roma civil society from EU-level umbrella NGOs

Roma people beneficiaries of inclusion measures in Toulouse and Roma self-advocates from other cities in Europe

City experts part of the EUROCITIES WG Homelessness will also be invited to join this study visit to contribute with their expertise in the field and advance a more integrated way of working between the two working groups to address the cross-cuttting challenge of homelessness of Roma people.

The study visit will be held back-to-back to the meeting of WG Migration & Integration and some sessions will be common to encourage sharing of ideas and knowledge.

Format

The two days of site visits and workshops will be structured around policy transfer sessions. Policy transfer will involve:

Toulouse as role model city

five transfer cities selected upon an open call

up to 20 other active participating cities and stakeholders

There are three stages in the policy transfer:

collaborative learning by examining in depth the processes, results, success factors and challenges Toulouse faced in implementing its policies for housing inclusion of Roma; participating cities can share 'critical friendly feedback' to Toulouse to help the host city continue and further improve its work in the field of housing inclusion of Roma.

co-creation of action plans for replicating cities by identifying factors that can support transferability of good practices from Toulouse and how to adapt them to the local conditions in their cities

follow-up and monitoring of progress - both Toulouse and the replicating cities as well as other active participating cities share plans for follow-up based on the learnings from the study visit; a follow-up and monitoring process is set up at about 6 months after the visit.

Apply NOW to be a transfer city

We are searching for 5 cities that are interested and committed to work on concrete actions to provide Roma with support to move out of camps or illegal settlements into adequate and sustainable housing. The five 'transfer' cities will be supported to develop actions based on learning from Toulouse's model. Our aim is to build capacity of city experts to learn and transfer some of the inspiring practices from Toulouse to support Roma to access adequate housing while adapting to the specific local conditions and target groups in their cities.